I wrote in the Irish Independent that:
EU participation an ongoing evolution - Letters, Opinion - Independent.ie

About the only remaining argument against the Lisbon Treaty the 'No' campaigners have left is that they dislike being asked to vote on the same treaty twice.

Well I was wrong.  Paul Kelly, in yesterday's Irish Times nobly offered his support to the poor oppressed peoples of France and Holland as his main reason for voting NO to Lisbon again. Obviously, the poor oppressed peoples of Spain and Luxembourg don't count as much, so I responded:

Lisbon Treaty referendum - The Irish Times - Thu, Jul 02, 2009

Madam, - Paul Kelly (July 1st) states that he will again be voting No to "support my fellow European citizens in France and Holland who rejected Lisbon in their democratic processes" and that "We are either in Europe together or we are not".

First of all, he is profoundly mistaken in that the French and Dutch voters rejected the Constitutional Treaty and not the Lisbon Treaty.

Secondly, he neglects to mention that Spain and Luxembourg voted Yes in even greater numbers on the Constitutional Treaty, and that if you combine the votes in all four member states you get a majority of 27 million to 23 million votes in favour of the Constitutional Treaty.

It thus seems that Mr Kelly is selectively for a minority of European voters who voted No in preference to the majority of European voters who voted Yes.

As he says himself, "We are either in Europe together or we are not"! - Yours, etc,

FRANK SCHNITTGER

I am not one to dance on other people's graves, but the collapse of Libertas post the European Elections has been truly spectacular.

Libertas on brink of extinction after poll disaster costs €40m - National News, Frontpage - Independent.ie

LIBERTAS has sunk into oblivion after forking out up to €40m on its disastrous European campaign, an Irish Independent investigation has found.

In Ireland alone, the party spent between €600,000 and €700,000 during the 30-day campaign. That figure is much higher when the major billboard campaign -- run at an estimated cost of €200,000 before election spending limits came into effect -- is factored in.

Libertas claims all these bills are accounted for from donations and fundraising, with the exception of between €20,000 and €30,000 which will be paid off through "dinners and golf tournaments", one source said.

But after running 532 candidates across Europe, just three countries are considering continuing with the Libertas banner -- Britain, Estonia and Slovakia.

The only candidate out of 532 candidates who won election for Libertas, French MEP Philippe de Villiers, confirmed he was no longer a member of the organisation.

The party's offices in Dublin, Brussels and London were all closed when the Irish Independent attempted to contact them this week.

Remaining Libertas members in Ireland are expected to meet in the coming weeks to decide if the party should be wound up, whether a new leader should be elected or if it should return to the status of a "think tank".

EU participation an ongoing evolution - Letters, Opinion - Independent.ie

Thursday June 25 2009

About the only remaining argument against the Lisbon Treaty the 'No' campaigners have left is that they dislike being asked to vote on the same treaty twice.

But we have also voted in referendums on proportional representation, divorce and the Nice Treaty twice, and voted no less than four times in abortion-related referendums.

In fact, we seem to be making a habit of revisiting the same issues to be sure, to be sure.

Politics is an ongoing process of change, not a once off, once and for all exercise. So the 'No' campaigners had better get used to it.

Many of them have campaigned against every European treaty referendum since our accession into the EU in 1973. They have become creatures of habit and will no doubt oppose the next treaty (likely to be the accession of Croatia) as well.

We cannot have too much democracy, consultation and participation in the ongoing evolution of the European Union.

Let us rejoice that we have the opportunity to vote when so many have not, both inside and outside the European Union. But let us also not be afraid to change our minds and amend the Constitution if circumstances warrant it, as we have done on no fewer than 23 occasions before.

Our Constitution is a living document, and is the better for those amendments.

Frank Schnittger

Kids 'power plant' sparks nuclear alert - The Irish Times - Tue, Jun 23, 2009

A toy nuclear power plant built by two six year-olds sparked a public alert in Germany, only for authorities to discover the would-be security threat was the shell of a computer with a radiation warning sign stuck to it.

Fire services and police cordoned off several streets and told residents to stay indoors in the western town of Oelde after the two boys left their mock power station on the street when they went home for dinner yesterday evening.

"It wasn't a prank, they were just playing," a local police spokeswoman said today.

"The boys tried to go back later to carry on but the fire brigade wouldn't let them through."

The lock-down of the area began when a passer-by saw the metal object with the yellow and black symbol on it, took fright and alerted authorities, the spokeswoman said.

Police sent out warnings on local radio for residents to remain in their homes while a radiation detector was rushed to the scene to investigate the old computer casing and the warning sign, which the boys had printed out from the internet.

After the object had been identified, the boys' parents explained to police the children had gone out to "play nuclear power station" that evening, the spokeswoman said

Perhaps Jerome could finance a project to distribute toy wind turbines to kids.

However this story also illustrates the power of symbols.  Presumably everyone knows what the shell of a computer looks like.  It is a familiar object which shouldn't cause much excitement.  But put a radiation symbol on it and suddenly the police alert local radio stations without even taking a good look at it first.

But of course the two six year olds were very bold. They left their toy on the street whilst they went off to dinner. Either their parents didn't teach them to tidy up after them, or they had immense faith that no one would steal their toy. Either way they disturbed Germany's famous Ruhe und Ordnung. No dinner next time!

Jon Worth is a long time blogger and commentator on European politics I respect greatly. I have interviewed him briefly, here.  All the more surprising to me therefore, that we seem to have differed greatly in our approach to the Common Agricultural policy and its reform.  

I see the CAP (however imperfect) as an essential mainstay of a sustainable European food industry and a bulwark against the disaster capitalism tactics of the global agri-business giants that would almost inevitably follow its demise.  Jon appears to see it as more part of the problem rather than the solution, which for him seems to lie with greater liberalisation of global food markets.

I don't think either of us are particularly qualified to conduct this debate on our own, so I have taken the liberty of copying our debate beneath the fold in the hope that it might attract some more expert comment on ET.  Is a Sustainable European food industry as essential as a sustainable European Energy or defence  industry?  Or is it just a bunch of cosseted farmers who should be let go to the wall?

You decide.

A conference to mark the end of the Th!nkaboutit blogging competition was held in Rotterdam on the 15th. June, and even merited a story in the Financial Times.

Joe Litobarski, Nanne Zwagermann, Andreas Mullerleile, Daniel Antal, Jon Worth, and Julien Frisch led a panel discussion on the outcome of the European Elections and David Brewer, of Media Ideas International, gave a presentation on the growing importance of blogging in conflict areas of the world - where creating an international blogging profile is sometimes the best insurance policy against arbitrary arrest and even death.  Jon Worth had this to say about the more prosaic matters of Euroblogging (against the backdrop of a boat trip around Rotterdam harbour)...

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

Cross-posted from the Th!nkaboutit euroblogging campaign.

I'm out of Ireland at the moment and really missing the election buzz.  I'm a real junkey for numbers and love the complexities of the Irish single transferable vote proportional representation system. It allows voters to vote for a list of candidates in order of their preference 1,2,3,4,5,6, etc.  If the candidate who got your number one is eliminated, your vote isn't lost.  It goes to the candidate you gave your number 2 preference to. Many voters deliberately give their initial preferences to candidates they want to encourage but who they know will be eliminated.  

Their vote keeps being transferred right down their list of their preferences until it elects someone in the last count - unless all your preferences were for losing candidates. If a candidate gets more than the quota of votes required to win one of the seats in a constituency (25% +1 in a three seat constituency) then the surplus is distributed in order of their next preferences.  

The upshot of all this apparent complexity (which is remarkably well understood by the electorate as a whole) is that virtually all votes matter, there are very few constituencies where the outcome is absolutely clear beforehand, and thus every constituency is a marginal or swing constituency, and none can be safely ignored by the party campaigns.  The system also throws up a remarkable array of successful independent and minor party candidates which keeps participation relatively high and keeps at bay voter apathy based on the perception that "their all the same" or its always only a choice between "tweedledum and tweedledee" with no one else having a chance.

Finally, it discourages a polarisation of party politics, because (a) if you piss off all the other parties/candidates, you are unlikely to get many lower preferences from their voters, and (b) because no party is likely to get the c. 50% of the vote required for an overall majority, and thus will have to work with at least some of the parties they have vilified to form a coalition government.  This last factor is what has done for Sinn Fein and Libertas in this election, despite their impressive first preference vote performances.  For an analysis of the results to date, please see below.

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

Cross-posted from the Th!nkaboutit euroblogging campaign.

Euro-sceptics love to point to declining voter turnouts in European Elections as evidence of the undemocratic nature of the whole European project.  And of course they have a point:  It would be so much better if there was a much higher degree of enthusiasm and turnout for the European Parliamentary elections.

But does the low turnout necessarily mean that the EU is an undemocratic elite project, that voters are antagonistic or couldn't care less, and that therefore the whole project should somehow be abandoned - or better still, from their point of view - that the EU should be turned over to Euro-sceptics to run properly?

I want to present a somewhat contrary thesis.  Firstly that the EU does not rely just on the European parliament for it's democratic legitimacy, but on 27 democratically elected member Governments. Secondly, that the European Parliament dimension of the EU is only emerging, and that it will take time for it's increased powers and influence to seem relevant to voters.  And thirdly, and perhaps most controversially of all, that people often only vote when they are angry or discontented with something, and that for many not voting doesn't mean a resounding NO to the European Project, but rather - carry on as before - I don't see any great need to change things from what they are.

Please allow me to elaborate on this last thesis.

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

Cross-posted from the Th!nkaboutit euroblogging campaign.


Gerry Adams MP MLA and Bairbre De Bruin MEP Sinn Fein

I am not a native nor an expert on Northern Ireland politics, but as there appears to be no one else of that ilk around here I will offer my take on the Northern Ireland European Parliament Elections which take place today. Politics in Northern Ireland has always been primarily about tribal identity.  You are either a Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist or a Catholic/Nationalist/Republican with the latter ends of those labels being at the extreme end of the spectrum.  

Of course this isn't an entirely fair description of the entire spectrum.  The Alliance Party has tried valiantly to fly the flag for (largely middle class) non-sectarian politics.  The Social Democrat and Labour Party (SDLP), previously led by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, John Hume, has also tried hard to break the sectarian divide and appeal to more progressively minded voters on both sides of the divide - with limited success.  

There were also the Peace People, the Women's Coalition, the Greens, and a number of smaller parties and individuals who tried to create a normal political space in a state that was founded explicitly in order to maintain a majority for one "community" over another.

But as Winston Churchill wrote after the first World War:

"Every institution in the world was strained. Great Empires have been overturned. The whole map of Europe has been changed... But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world."

Reginald Maudling, a former British Conservative Home Secretary is reputed to have said as he sank into his airline seat after a visit to try and pacify the warring tribes.

"FOR GOD'S sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country."

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 



Cross-posted from the Th!nkaboutit euroblogging campaign.

The Irish Times has just produced a new poll directly comparable to the one I analysed two weeks ago in Data, Data, Data.  The general picture over the past two weeks of the campaign is remarkably stable, with few changes greater than the 2% margin of error.  The overall results for party support (if a general election were held today) are:

Fianna Fáil, 20 per cent (down 1 point)
Fine Gael, 36 per cent (down 2 points)
Labour, 23 per cent (up 3 points)
Sinn Féin, 8 per cent (down 1 point)
Green Party, 3 per cent (no change);
Independents/others, 10 per cent (up 1 point).

Up until now Irish politics has been dominated by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael - two more or less conservative parties arising out of the Irish Civil War (1922-23) - with Labour, Sinn Fein, the Greens and some minor parties playing bit part roles as members of Government coalitions or the Opposition. It would indeed be a change of historic proportions if these figures were reflected in the next general election, as Fianna Fail would slip from being the largest party (in every election since its formation in 1926) to third place.  Labour would become the second largest party, and arguably, Irish politics would adopt the left-right dialectic so common in European politics.  

Letter published in Irish Independent - Ireland's largest circulation daily. Unfortunately the qualifier "who came in contact with the system" highlighted below was omitted from the published text.

There have been many expressions of shock at the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse which found that physical and sexual abuse of children was widespread, systematic and endemic.  But are we really surprised?  Can anyone from the Department of Education down to the Catholic Bishops, religious superiors, inspectors, teachers, care workers, doctors and nurses who came in contact with the system claim ignorance of what was actually going on?  

Many a child of my era was threatened with the reform school if we did not behave.  We had our own Gulag Archipelago on our own doorstep and did nothing about it because of a slavish adherence to a religious dictatorship.

But the Government priority now, as articulated by our Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, is to prevent anyone speaking ill of the religious by bringing in a new criminal offence of blasphemous libel.  We need not only to dismiss this ridiculous suggestion and those who propose it, but the Constitutional provision which they claim requires it.

If we put half as much effort into debating a Constitutional amendment to protect the rights of children as we have with the Lisbon Treaty, there is no reason why both referenda can't be held this October.

Indeed the Lisbon Treaty, if ratified, would give legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which includes specific provisions for the the rights of children to be protected and cared for; to express their views freely; for their views to be taken into account; to maintain contact with their parents; and to have their best interests be the primary consideration in all actions taken in relation to them.

It would be appropriate that a Referendum on a Treaty which gives legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union should also be accompanied by a constitutional amendment protecting the human rights of our children and getting rid of the archaic constitutional protection of religious rights not to be offended by others.

We have had enough of the apologies of the perpetrators of child abuse and those who protected them, and moral outrage only gets you so far. It is time we had some real action, and we cannot trust those who have ruled this country for so long to provide it. The message to all parties at the forthcoming elections must be - we want constitutional action on this now, or you will not be given a second chance.

EUROPEAN ELECTIONS

I had a 50 minute on camera conversation with Dick Roche, the Irish minister for European Affairs, in the Department of the Taoiseach yesterday in which he had some strident things to say about Paul Krugman, Vaclav Klaus and Declan Ganley.

He accuses Krugman of not being attentive to Irish economics in his comments and of having bigger fish to fry in the US - "his analysis which compares a stimulus package (in the US) to the Irish situation without taking into account the full range of social supports available in Ireland ... is somewhat fatuous for a man with his economic reputation ... in real terms the EU and Ireland has a stimulus package ... but it would be a very brave person who would suggest spending even more money here when we have such a massive gap between the tax take and current expenditure." The issue of whether there should be an EU stimulus package as opposed to national stimulus packages is one which might properly be discussed as part of the campaign, but hasn't really been raised to date.

Roche lambastes Vaclav Klaus for a "gross breach of protocol"; of "interfering in Irish politics"; of amazingly subjugating the right of the Czech people to make their choice on Lisbon to the decision of the Irish people; and of being "an embarrassment to his own country".

He accused Declan Ganley of attacking Europe for not supporting the invasion of Iraq because he "stood to make a lot of money out of the war in Iraq, through his operations in Guardian Net and Liberty Mobile, and his disgusting involvement with very very corrupt arrangements in Iraq ... (where) attempts were made by a discredited US Under secretary of Defense ... Mr. Jack Shaw ... to skew contracts ... when contests were run for telecommunications networks in Iraq and his friends who owned the CDMA technology rights - including the Ganley Consortium - failed to win contests .., Mr. Shaw tried to have those contests overturned and tried to run a contest that was not a contest ... a so called contract to install a first responder network ... and morphed these into full commercial phone networks without the bother of having any contractual contest ... and these are the people who talk about openness and transparency?"

excellent grassroots journalism from the diaries -- Jérôme

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 
Cross-posted from the TH!NK ABOUT IT Euroblogging site.


As readers of my series on the US elections will hopefully recall, I try to do my political analysis on the basis of hard data as much as possible. Personal impressions, anecdotal evidence, and debunking MSM media agendas will only get you so far.

So it's great when a real, live, opinion poll comes along to confirm or confound your previous perceptions, not that I am an unalloyed fan of the genre.  Hilary Clinton was, after all, so far ahead in the opinion polls at one stage prior to the first Democratic Primaries as to be almost out of sight.

Up until now in the European elections in Ireland, we have only had one recent Sunday Business Post Red C poll and some rather dubious projections by the Predict09.eu website which do not appear to take the complexities of the Irish three seat constituency single transferable vote proportional representation system into account, despite the presence of Michael Marsh, a distinguished Irish political scientist, on their editorial board.

But yesterdays Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll ticks all the boxes.  Not only is the sample size (2000) big enough to yield a 2% margin of error, but the sample size for each of the four constituencies (500) is big enough to yield a 4% margin of error where it matters, at the level of each constituency.  

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 
Cross-posted from the TH!NK ABOUT IT Euroblogging site.

Dick Roche is the Minister for European Affairs and a member of Fianna Fail, the main Governing party in Ireland.  In that capacity he is responsible for coordinating the European dimension of all of the Irish Government's policy and legislative initiatives including the proposed second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

He has agreed to an interview next Tuesday which I hope to document on this blog.  I am currently planning the interview and would like to enlist your help in coming up with some good questions - particularly from a European angle, or from the perspective of your own country.

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

Cross-posted from the TH!NK ABOUT IT Euroblogging site.

 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 

Libertas has suffered a triple whammy to its credibility as a force in Irish, never mind European politics, with the publication of a (PDF Alert) poll showing it gaining only 2% of first preference votes in the European Elections, losing 69 to 31% in a Lisbon referendum re-run, and with the remarks of its ex-director in favour of ratifying the Treaty

IRELAND DOES not have the luxury of a second No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum and voters should vote Yes, one of the architects of last year's Libertas campaign has said.

Naoise Nunn, who resigned as executive director of Libertas last September said: "The circumstances have changed: internationally, economically, financially and domestically.

"We don't have the luxury of doing anything else. I am glad that we had a referendum. We were the only member state to do so, to have a proper debate, or something like a proper debate," Mr Nunn told The Irish Times .

His public declaration will come as an embarrassment for Libertas founder, Declan Ganley, who is running for the organisation in the European Parliament elections in the North-West constituency.

Both sides were guilty, he said, of "scare-mongering and misinformation" during the referendum campaign. Mr Nunn, who was one of the central figures in Libertas's campaign last year, is understood to have written a detailed critique of Libertas's performance last year for Mr Ganley's attention before his departure last year.

From the diaries - afew

Today a Government think tank has issued a report forecasting that Irish GDP will decline by 9% in 2009 and by 14% in the period 2008-2010. New figures show that unemployment has doubled in the last 12 months, and tripled in the past 2 years to 11%, and will rise to 17% next year.  New car purchases are down 64% and the value of share transactions on the Irish Stock Exchange is down 75% on last year. The general Government deficit will be 12 per cent of GDP this year and next - not counting the cost to the State of buying toxic assets from the banks by way of the National Asset Management Agency. (This transaction will add a substantial but as yet unknown amount to Government debt and to the State's annual interest bill).

So obviously the main focus of today's radio talk shows is a Government Bill to bring in a new crime of blasphemy.  Yes, books like The Satanic Verses and the Da Vinci code, cartoons depicting Mohammed and irreverent comedians like Tommy Tiernan could be the ruination of the country. What we really need is a Charter for religious fundamentalists to make sure the rest of us keep our mouths shut.  

I kid you not...

Colman wrote a front page story recently in which he lamented the development of too cosy a consensus on ET and the lack of robust challenge and debate.  I opined that:

When mutual respect and trust breaks down people retreat into their bunkers and do their own thing.  There have been too many personalised exchanges for people to feel safe about adopting unpopular positions or making arguments which could be misconstrued. .

To which afew replied:

If you think mutual respect and trust have broken down, Frank, why are you here? (No, that is not to be read as hostile. It's a serious question).

and Migeru responded:

Doing his own thing from the bunker, like everyone else? (not snark, but a serious answer)

and Melo suggested that

because trust is a renewable resource?

I avoided engaging the question because I wanted to think it over, but did allow that if Poemless wanted

...a Faustian bargain?

that this might be it:  In other words, if you want the benefits of engaging with a pile of other people on a relatively open platform you don't necessarily get to write or enforce the rules and people will express views and make decisions you don't always agree with.

Every now and then the ET community get caught up in a bout of introspection - usually in the wake of some flame war or other.  This is emphatically not an attempt to reprise same.  At the same time I find myself coming here less and less often, and wanted to reflect on why this might be.

Cross posted from TH!NK ABOUT IT, Booman Tribune and Daily Kos

In a shock development it has emerged in the last hour that the European Parliament Elections scheduled for this June are to be cancelled.  A Spokesman for Commission President Barroso stated that it had been decided to cancel the elections for reasons of a lack of public interest.

"We have conducted an extensive survey of EU citizens and have concluded that the turnout is unlikely to be in excess of 30%.  In the circumstances a fair and valid outcome, as required under the Nice Treaty, is unlikely to be possible.  Less than 15 % of EU citizens were aware that the elections were due to happen in any case, so there is unlikely to be much public disappointment at their cancellation".

The spokesman added that as Manuel Barroso was already assured of re-appointment as Commission President, an additional election now would serve little purpose.  Given the scale of the current economic downturn, it is vital that we economise on all unnecessary expenditure, and the cancellation is expected to save hundreds of millions of Euro in election expenses in the member states.

Cross-posted from the TH!NK ABOUT IT Euroblogging site.

As avid readers here will know, I wrote a deliberately provocatively entitled story  Is TH!NK ABOUT IT dying? in an effort to stoke up some discussion about how the TH!NK ABOUT IT project is doing as we enter the half way stage.  In it I worried about a lack of posts and discussion and concluded that it was most probably because most people found the EU a difficult subject to blog and read about in an interesting or entertaining way.

In a subsequent post I argued that we needed to be able to state What difference will the EP Elections make for you? if we were going to be successful in raising awareness and interest in the EP elections amongst a wider public.